Tuesday, November 21, 2017

SOLTuesday: Dreaming and Writing

I am part of a reading series called Big Words. (The
audience at one gathering votes for the “big word” or phrase that will be the
prompt for the next gathering.) This month’s Big Word is “Five More Minutes.”

I thought I
had an idea, and a week before the reading (which is tonight), I started
writing. But it just wasn’t coming out right. One of those ideas that sounds
good in theory, but maybe I just don’t have the skill to make it be what I
wanted it to be. What to do?

A couple of
nights later I was having a hard time sleeping: lying awake, dozing for a
while, snapping awake again. In one of those snap phases, I had the image of a
young man named Charles Fletcher, who lives in the 1950s in one of those
classic red-brick apartment buildings in Queens, New York, and has a mild crush
on an older woman who lives in his building, who has three children. Hmmm, what
could I do with that?

The next
day, I had a few hours between meeting friends. So I took my laptop to a nearby
library, sat down, and wrote a story. Sent it to my writers’ group, who gave me
excellent feedback (way too much setup; doesn’t really end), and yesterday did
a revise.

No time to
send it back for more feedback. I will just take it out and run it past the
audience tonight. I hope they like it.